


If only you knew me (but you don't)

by MadClairvoyant



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, random facts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadClairvoyant/pseuds/MadClairvoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>45 things about a girl named Irene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If only you knew me (but you don't)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lsellers (Annariel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/gifts).



> This is written for in the format of 'random facts', because I tried really hard to incorporate all that you wrote about in your Dear Yuletide Author letter. It isn't very good, and it isn't really a Gen/Irene piece, but I tried to explore her character instead, and leave it to you to decide how things would turn out (based on how she treats Gen.)
> 
> Also, I did try to add in bits about the Gods, how they interacted with her, and her feelings.

1\. She never liked her name; Irene was far too ordinary for her. She wanted fame, fortune, glory; she wanted things that little girls called Irene never got.

2\. Her mother had died not long after her third birthday, and she could not remember her. All she knew about her was her striking resemblance to the late queen. People around her cooed over her looks, and told her she was as pretty as her mother had been, and that she should be proud.

3\. … when she looked into the mirror, all she saw was a dead woman.

4\. There was a comb of her late mother that she loved dearly; it was a delicate thing, wrought in silver and inlaid with large, shining rubies. Perhaps she loved it because when she held it, she could almost remember a kind smile, a pair of shining blue eyes, and long blond hair perfumed with a certain herb.

5\. Her father had taken it away, giving it to one of his many women.

6\. … She never forgave him.

7\. When she was younger, her father often forced her to follow him to the temples to pray to gods, shaking silver and gold discs at the invaders’ and muttering useless prayers at the Old ones.

8\. As she got older, the visits became more and more frequent. Till the end, her father was begging and bartering with Them for favours that he knew they would never grant; even as he beseeched Hephestia with empty words, he knew the Goddess was not listening.

9\. … She never told him she could hear Her in the priestess’ voice.

10\. The first time she saw the Eddisian princess, Helen, she realized that there were people whom you desperately wanted to befriend, and whom you never could. Watching her darker counterpart spin across the floor with her cousins, she understood something very important; love sees sharply, and hatred sees even sharper, but jealousy sees the sharpest because it is both love and hate at the same time.

11\. In the kitchens, there was a slight, dark-skinned little girl whose name always escaped her, and whom she pretended was Eddisian. More importantly, when she spun across the floor, smiling and laughing, the only name she could put to that face was Helen, and so she befriended the younger girl in secret, because it would be the closest thing she would ever get.

12\. She didn’t mean to break that amphora when she threw her slipper at it. She was just so filled with pent-up frustration that she had to release it all somehow.

13\. The stench of hair oil lingered long after it had been wiped away.

14\. When her father announced her betrothal, she nodded, smiling sweetly like she was taught to before rushing off to her rooms and retching for the rest of the morning.

15\. The first time she saw her fiancé, she thought that he saw a servant, with his pug-like face and boorish manners. It was an honest mistake. 

16\. At her fiancé’s ancestral home, she often took the shadows to sew quietly; the very picture of an industrial girl. He pretended she was deaf to his plots, and she pretended that every needle jabbed into his shirts wasn’t intended for his eyes.

17\. When he had the audacity to put on a grieving face for her when telling her that her father was dead, her hand clenched. For a moment, and just a fleeting one mind you, she entertained the idea of slapping his face just to see if he could keep up the face.

18\. Amongst the crystal and silver service at her first wedding feast and the proprietary glances directed at her, she wondered if she was just another pretty ornament at the table.

19\. The bright red stain on her wedding dress was the only thing of her to have any colour at all on that day. 

20\. She never threw that dress away.

21\. Half an hour before she had to meet her fractious barons as their queen for the very first time, she had settled in front of her boudoir and looked carefully into her mirror. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, perhaps a fresh-faced young girl of sixteen who looked terrified. But she certainly did not expect to see that cold, almost cruel visage reflected off the polished silver. Ever curious, she wondered if her skin was really that hard; like stone, like glass.

22\. Unable to help herself, she placed her head in her arms and cried for the first time in a long, long time, wishing her tears would wash it all away.

23\. When the (her?) captain of guard raised his crossbow, she could honestly say that it was one of the only moments in her life that she thought that she was terrified; was that arrow for the baron, or for her?

24\. The name Attolia was fitting for her; it was grand, simple and befitting of her role. It reminded the people around her of her power, and that they would never cross her. Finally, she had found a name that suited her.

25\. … Even though it felt strangely heavy a burden to carry.

26\. (Did we always choose things that made us unhappy? She wonders.)

27\. The first time she met the Thief of Eddis, she realised she had finally met her match in a young boy dressed as a street urchin and far more dangerous than she could ever imagine.

28\. In another life, they could all have been friends.

29\. She had always prided herself for being poised, elegant, and certainly not affected by nasty comments made by insolent little thieves. Not at all.

30\. Having received the invitation to the ceremony in which the Queen of Eddis would destroy the Gift (that was almost hers), she had no choice but to graciously accept. It didn’t mean she was not furious that it had slipped past her fingers, and was now going to be obliterated by a foolish girl. 

31\. She often wondered if she would have the courage to give up immortality

32\. Attolian lilies were her favourite flowers; they were pretty and fragrant. And yet when she woke one morning to the cloying scent of dried lilies on her bedside table, she felt an uncontrollable urge to vomit. While her attendants chittered about a secret admirer, she couldn’t help but think that the room smelt like a funeral.

33\. She took a strange liking of rubies; the rich red colouring was something she admired, because she desperately didn’t want to return to being the colourless princess in the shadows that no one remembered. 

34\. Despite her fury when she found the earrings, she just couldn’t bring herself to throw them away. Under the cold moon light, the gold was bleached to a pale silver, and the rubies gleamed with a hidden fire; if she squinted, they almost looked like a comb from an old memory.

35\. She always thought that she was special because she could hear the voice of the Goddess, but when Moira appears in her room that night, she was beginning to feel really sorry that she did.

36\. The Mede’s hair oil stank, and she had to fight the urge to tell him that he looked ridiculous with a forked beard whenever he tried to flatter her.

37\. She had always been a relatively clever girl, which meant that she actually used her brains. Unfortunately, that also translated to the fact that strange, unrelated thoughts surfaced at the most inopportune moments, like when she had to resist asking Eugenides if his bones ached like hers.

38\. … When she had more important things to consider like the black water that would fill her lungs if she said the wrong thing.

39\. She always wondered if he had changed enough by then to really drown her if she refused him. 

40\. (She hoped sincerely she didn’t have a hand in creating another monster.)

41\. She would always associate the rain with flashing swords, a new beginning, and a small dark figure darting between slashes.

42\. Never had she been as thankful for Eugenides’ quick thinking as the moment she saw the flash of recognition in his eyes when he   
saw her earrings.

43\. For the rest of her life she would never be able to look at his truncated limb without recalling the metallic scent of blood and the echo of a dying sob

44\. Finally, after years of iron-clad control over her temper, she let loose herself and threw an inkpot at someone. (Unfortunately, her aim had become rather poor.)

45\. Despite the shadow of war that loomed over them all, she felt a measure of something when speaking to Eddis in her gardens. There was something like friendship between them, and it felt a little like peace.

**Author's Note:**

> It was supposed to end with either of them dying, or becoming indifferent, but since it is Yuletide, I gave her a nicer conclusion. (The downside is that there is no Gen/Irene, because I think in the long-run, things just are not going to work out.)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
